If you sincerely believe in selling your products or services in a straightforward manner and want to build long-term business relationships with your prospects and customers, then you may benefit from a brief read of the sales methodology overview I posted on the Terrakon website.

HAVE™ Trust Selling is the sales methodology I developed after a number of years of intense study of the sales process and trust development, coupled with over a decade of real-world sales and consulting experience. The sales methodology overview provides background on the issue and importance of trust in the business environment; definitions of trust and how it is developed; as well as a description of why and how the sales method works.

I guess you could call the methodology overview the "mission statement" for this blog. At the very least, it certainly serves as the basis for a great majority of my posts.

Best Regards,

Rob Reed
Terrakon - A Sales Consulting and Internet Marketing Firm

Recently, I received a direct mail sales letter from an investment firm. This firm wanted me to complete a short form to request a "free guide" about the "...Biggest Mistakes Investors Make." While there were quite a few issues with the sales letter, I did open it so I'll give them that.

Here's my main problem, though, with the direct mail piece. On the "confidential request form," the offer provides two primary options. The first option is to check "Yes! I am an individual with assets totaling over $500,000." Right below the check box is another set of check boxes asking you to offer up your total net worth. Uh, right.

What interested me most about the letter was the next major check box below a line saying "or" "$0-$500K (Currently, I do not have assets totaling over $500,000, but keep my name and number on file as things may change.)"

I'm not kidding. That's what the letter said from an investment firm that says they have billions in assets under management. Essentially, they're saying, "Sorry, if you're not currently rich, then we're not going to waste our time sending you our free guide. However, if you do win the lottery or gain an inheritance, we'd love to chat at that point."

Look, I understand this investment firm "serves" a certain level of clientele and supposedly have billions under management and want to target a select group of folks. I understand that. But why turn off all of your prospects - including the wealthy ones? Why would a "wealthy" investor want to deal with a company that obviously lacks in the empathy department?

Two suggestions:

1. Buy a better list.
2. Check box: Less than $500K (We'd love to send you our free guide to help you increase your financial assets. While we cannot add you to our client list at this time, please accept the guide as our gift.)

You could come up with a dozen other (better) copy options for the second check box that would help build trust or at least, avoid diminishing trust as this sales letter did.

Rob Reed
Terrakon - a sales and internet marketing consulting firm

Syndication Header: Rob Reed is president of Terrakon Sales and Marketing Consulting. Terrakon provides sales, marketing, and internet marketing services that increase online and offline conversions using a trust-building framework.

Post: If you are exploring different advertising mediums, you may want to consider survey results from comScore Networks conducted in Fall 2006. The question of 1,000 respondents representing the general internet population:

Where would you find trustworthy advertising for any product or service?

Advertising Medium - Percent of respondents

1. TV - 63%
2. Corporate sites - 51%
3. Print - 50%
4. News/Media sites - 49%
5. Radio - 28%
6. User Generated Content Sites (UGC) - 23%
7. Billboard - 19%

There are at least three significant takeaways from this survey:

1. If you offer a service or more complex product where trust is critical to your success, you may want to think twice about which advertising vehicle is used in your marketing mix.
2. It appears the majority of people do not believe advertising is trustworthy for products and services. The lack of trust could be because many companies and ad agencies use way too much hype; focus too much on the creative and not enough on the consumer; and don't understand how to build trust elements into their advertising.
3. If you can create trustworthy advertising, you can significantly differentiate yourself in the minds of potential customers and win more business - regardless of which advertising vehicle you choose.

Syndication Header: Terrakon is a sales and marketing consulting firm in St. Louis that specializes in helping clients differentiate from competitors through marketing strategies and sales processes that build greater prospect trust.

Post: David Maister has an interesting blog discussion going on the topic of, “How Polite Are You?” It’s not mentioned in David’s blog, but how others perceive your politeness is part of your personal brand. The discussion on his post reminded me of a recent, similar situation.

Late last year, I attended an American Marketing Association meeting in St. Louis. I went specifically to hear the speaker talk about a subject that is very interesting to me – creating a trusted brand. The speaker was the founder and president of the company.

His company has some nice quotes on its website:

“Every brand is a promise. How will yours be kept?"

"Quite simply, business is built on trust."

"Every brand is a promise and every touch point represents an opportunity to make or break that promise – building or destroying trust in the process.”

Quite frankly, the speech was very interesting – at least to me. In fact, I sat next to the founder/president and we talked at length before his presentation.

Because I’ve studied trust development and the sales and marketing processes for a number of years, I asked the founder of this company if he’d be interested in taking a look at a report I’d written and give me his thoughts. I thought there may be some business synergies that would make sense. He said he’d be interested in taking a look and we decided on the best delivery mechanism.

I emailed him a link to the report. No response. I waited a few weeks and sent a follow-up message. Still, no response. I then “snail mailed” a hardcopy of the report and followed up again a week later. Again, no response. One last follow up a few weeks later. Again, no response.

Okay, so I got it. For whatever reason, this gentleman had no interest in talking – or even responding to me. That’s fine, it happens all the time in business.

But take another look at the quotes on his company website. He even mentioned a few of them in his presentation. “Every touch point represents an opportunity to make or break that promise – building or destroying trust in the process.”

I’m not sure there is a stronger touch point than one with the founder and president of a company. Reading his website and then hearing his speech, I had a very favorable impression of his company and personal brand.

Now? Uh, not so much. Hey, if you tell someone you’d be interested in taking a look at their report and ask them to take the time to send it to you, the least you could do, in my opinion, is reply. Am I wrong there? Even if it’s to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t have the time right now.” Or even, “I read the report, don’t see any synergies.”

I don’t know. Perhaps we’re all so busy in business today that we must pick and choose with whom we want to establish a favorable, personal brand and “weed out” the folks that we don’t. Has it come to that?  Are we at the point in business where we think to ourselves, “Hmm, I see the potential to make money with you, so I want to establish a trusted brand. This person, on the other hand, it doesn’t look like you can help me in the immediate future, so I don’t have the time to care what you think of my personal brand."

If someone has that mentality, should anyone trust them? Should we trust someone who only wants to build trust and have a favorable, personal brand when it's conducive to improving their own business situation?

Rob Reed
Terrakon

Make TRUST your difference.

If you read this and other blogs with regularity, one of your talents may be that of a "learner." However, have you ever stopped to think about how you best learn and retain information? By the time we reach the workplace, most of us have a general sense for how we best learn.

If you're not sure or just interested in learning more about how you best obtain information, here's a link to a free online assessment you can take from North Carolina State University. It's free for your personal use and takes less than 10 minutes to complete. The results are provided immediately online.

http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/ILSpage.html

Rob Reed is president of Terrakon, a sales and marketing consulting firm based in St. Louis. Terrakon specializes in helping clients incorporate trust building sales and marketing strategies and processes to attract and win more customers.

Like many of you, I recently completed my FY2007 goals. Here’s a suggestion if you want to significantly increase the likelihood you actually achieve your sales goals this upcoming year.

Write your SMART goals down as you normally do. Again, SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-based. If you’re not familiar with the SMART process, simply Google and you’ll find plenty of information.

Once you’ve written down your SMART goals, write the words, “I will:” at the top of your goal page. Then, print your name and a signature line at the bottom of your goal page. Sign your name on the signature line and prepare yourself for the most important step. This task is critical, so please make sure you take this final step! Make a copy of your signed goal document and hand the signed copy to at least one other individual.

The individual may be a co-worker, manager, mentor, subordinate, spouse or even best friend. The role the person plays is not as critical as that you give your signed, goal document to someone you respect. If you want to increase the likelihood you achieve your goals even more, hand your signed goal document to a number of different people.

I use this process in my sales seminars and I encourage clients to use the process with their sales reps for a variety of sales processes.

This simple process leverages the well studied principles of commitment and consistency. Humans feel a strong internal drive to remain consistent in their actions with commitments they’ve made. According to well known social psychologists, Robert Cialdini, we significantly increase the likelihood we will “live up” to commitments made when those commitments are active, effortful, public and voluntary.

Writing your goals down, signing your name and providing your FY2007 goals to another individual or a group of people, leverages these four factors to increase the likelihood that you are consistent (live up to) your goals.

While this is a very easy process, I promise many of you will not take the final step. Quite frankly, it is actually somewhat difficult to make these commitments because we don’t want others to know we’ve failed if we don’t achieve our goals. That’s part of the psychology that drives us to action – if you take the final step.

One final thought. Repeat this process with your weekly, monthly or quarterly action plans you’ve developed to achieve your goals. You have those action plans - right? Leveraging the principles of commitment and consistency for these interim processes will make it more likely you achieve your longer term goals.

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes, but no plans.”

--- Peter Drucker ---

Happy New Year!

Rob Reed is president of Terrakon, a sales and marketing consulting firm based in St. Louis. Terrakon specializes in helping clients incorporate trust building sales and marketing strategies and processes to attract and win more customers.

Sales Questions to Ask Prospects as a Trusted Seller

One of the most critical things you can do during a sales call to build greater levels of prospect trust is to ask good sales questions.

Prior to every discussion with a potential customer, you should always have a list of 12 to 15 questions you plan to ask during a sales meeting.

To give you a few ideas, I've listed some potential sales questions to ask prospects on my website.

These questions are not listed or categorized in any particular order. Read through them and pick the ones you can adapt to your specific selling environment and situation.

If you'd like more sales questions, I've created the Sales Questions for Trusted Sellers handbook which includes over 135 sales questions you should ask prospects, as well as a sample of more than 25 sales questions you should not ask prospects - if you want to be perceived as a trusted seller.

The sales questions handbook is part of a 158 page ebook called the Trusted Seller Package.

Note: This seems to be one of the more popular posts on my blog, so I'll keep it in the "top ten" posts so new readers will be able to easily find it. Rob

Who is the most successful sales person? Is it the salesperson with:

1. the best product knowledge
2. the best sales skills
3. the best customer knowledge
4. the best looking
5. the most likeable

According to a couple of articles in the Gallup Management Journal (http://gmj.gallup.com/default.aspx - subscription required), by Benson Smith, co-author of Discover Your Sales Strengths, none of the above factors differentiate the most successful salespeople from the mediocre. This is not to say that the first three factors are not important. They are important. However, they do not differentiate the best from the rest.

A company that Gallup has studied tested all of its sales employees on product knowledge at an annual sales meeting. Much to the company's surprise, its top performers didn't score any better on product knowledge exams than did the rest of the sales force. The company also had each of the representatives perform in role-playing scenarios only to find out that their best people didn't necessarily give the best presentations either. And many of their superior producers didn't follow the company's scripted sales presentations. Even more surprising, the best reps didn't necessarily know more about their customers than did the rest of the sales organization. If you objectively look at your own selling organization, you will likely draw the same conclusions.

While factor #4, best looking, has been shown to impact pay levels and hiring decisions, Gallup research did not find top performers were any "better looking" than average performers. Other studies have shown similar results for likeability.

After researching over 250,000 sales reps, Gallup found that the following factors differentiated the best sales reps from the average reps:

The talents most predictive of success in these sales roles had to do with motivation, an ability to build trust quickly, and a willingness to ask for commitments.

If you manage a sales force or the sales process is a significant part of your job responsibility, I highly recommend you pick up Discover Your Sales Strengths and take the online test to identify your top five talents. Well worth your time.

If you want to learn how you can build higher levels of trust, more quickly, read more of this blog and check out my Terrakon sales and internet marketing website.

Best Regards,

Rob Reed

I'm currently looking for on line survey vendors to set up a survey for one of my clients. I ran across a great example of something you should consider implementing in an on line and/or offline environment to build greater levels of trust with your prospects.

On their site, SurveyMonkey lists the websites of over 30 of their competitors. That's right. The COMPETITION...

http://www.surveymonkey.com/Pricing.asp

That's powerful stuff. Here's why:

1. Prospects are much more likely to perceive that you're truly concerned about their needs if you help them buy rather than sell to them. Empathy is one of the four key trust components. By offering a list of competitor links, SurveyMonkey is saving prospects a lot of time and angst searching for survey providers.
2. It's unexpected. Most companies or sellers don't come out and offer you a list and websites of their competitors. This clearly differentiates SurveyMonkey from the rest.
3. Prospects will perceive that you have unquestionable confidence in your product or service. Hey, if you believe in your product or service so much that you'll give me the name and links to your competitors, you must have a really good product or service. In fact, if you've built enough trust to overcome my perceived risk, I may not even spend my valuable time researching the list of competitors you just offered.

If you sell face-to-face, try to develop a sincere way to help your prospects out by suggesting other solution providers to consider. See what happens. Perhaps try it out with your "ideal prospects" where you have more confidence and think you offer the best fit versus your competitors. Track your results and if favorable, test it out on more "competitive" prospects.

If you're on line, try doing something similar to SurveyMonkey and see what kind of conversion you get versus your baseline. You can check out over 30 more building trust sales tips by clicking the link.

BTW: I'm not affiliated in any way and I am not receiving any "freebies" or any other form of compensation from SurveyMonkey. I just think they've consciously or unconsciously done something very smart to build greater trust levels with prospects...

Best,

Rob Reed

Terrakon Sales and Internet Marketing Consulting

In an earlier post, I talked about how you should be very wary of just a little sales knowledge. You should also be wary of the information and advice you receive from so-called "experts."

As you know, most of the "sales improvement" information of today is really just reformulated sales advice of the past thirty years. Many of the "facts", stories and information become quite familiar once you read a number of different sales books. And once the information appears written down somewhere, most people accept the information as accurate. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

Here's a classic example. Early in my career, I remember reading about this study at Yale that talked about the critical importance of having written goals. Perhaps you've read the analogy yourself since it has been used by famous experts like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins.

The story:

In 1953, researchers surveyed Yale's graduating seniors to determine how many of them had specific, written goals for their future. The answer: 3%. Twenty years later, researchers polled the surviving members of the Class of 1953 -- and found that the 3% with goals had accumulated more personal financial wealth than the other 97% of the class combined!

Pretty impressive story isn't it? Must be true if "big shots" like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins are using the story - right?

Wrong! The story is not true at all.

According to an article in Fast Company:

It's a consultant's dream anecdote: a vivid Ivy League success story that documents the cause-and-effect relationship between goals and personal success. It's powerful! It's compelling! It's also completely untrue -- as the Fast Company Consultant Debunking Unit (CDU) found out.

Here's the link to the full article:

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/cdu.html

Again, be wary of a little sales knowledge.

Best,

Rob Reed

Terrakon Sales and Internet Marketing Company